STORY ARCHIVE

Dr Craig Venter

TRANSCRIPT

Since this interview was recorded, Dr Craig Venter has announced the successful synthesis of a self-replicating bacterium — more details at the end of this transcript.

NARRATION Circumnavigating the world aboard a 90 foot sloop named Sorcerer II seems an unlikely place to begin creating "artificial life". But innovation has seen Dr Craig Venter achieve implausible goals in the past. He believes a breakthrough is imminent, and the millions of organisms collected by this vessel, and also from beneath the earth's crust, will provide building blocks for synthetic organisms he hopes will power the planet with greener energy. Already, Dr Craig Venter's team has achieved two milestones — transferring the genome of one bacterium into another and separately, manufacturing a genome from scratch. The final step is to combine the two — transplanting a synthetic genome into a living bacterial cell.

Dr Graham Phillips So when are you going to make the big step of putting the artificial genome into a bacterium?

Dr J. Craig Venter Well it's something we have 20 people working on it almost around the clock. I've stopped predicting because I've predicted for two years it will happen that year so we think we're very close each time we've tried to do it we've found there were barriers in biology to discourage that from happening and I think we've solved them one at a time but we think we really have to wait till we have the proof hopefully soon, but I don't want to predict.

Dr Graham Phillips What are the challenges? If you can take the DNA out of a bacterium and fiddle with it and put it back into a different bacterium what's so hard about putting a synthetic genome into a bacterium.

Dr J. Craig Venter The DNA really has to be accurate so we have some pieces where even one letter changing out of a million is enough to have it not work, so it's like with our computer software if there's a glitch in the software the program crashes. This is no different, this is the software of life so we're having to learn all these new rules because nobody's ever tried to do this before.

Dr Graham Phillips Okay, once you've achieved that one of your goals is to try to deal with some environmental problems, how do you do that?

Dr J. Craig Venter We have a program trying to look deep in the earth to discover new life forms and we've discovered thousands of these more than a mile deep in the earth that live off of coal, convert coal into natural gas.

Dr Graham Phillips Really, is that really surprising that there's that much life down there.

Dr J. Craig Venter When we started these experiments we knew there was things down there, nobody knew how many, what the diversity was, but we found the same density of cells that we find in the ocean about a million cells per millilitre and amazing new life forms, very complex single cell organisms that live in this environment, and we're trying to harness them to see if we can convert coal in the ground into methane, natural gas instead of digging up the coal and burning it. So it's about a ten fold improvement. It's still taking new carbon out of the ground but then we have a different solution we're working on where we're trying to take CO2 and have that be the source of the carbon for new fuels so we're using algae right now to and sunlight to fix the carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons.

Dr Graham Phillips So how do you do that? You somehow get the algae to produce oil?

Dr J. Craig Venter We've changed a few of these genetically adding some unique genes from plants where the algae just pumped the hydrocarbons out into the solution and so that creates mini bio-factories and so it's like a continuous production just with sunlight and carbon dioxide and the challenge for a biologist is going from a tiny test tube to a beaker, now we have to go from a beaker to a billion gallons so nobody's ever gone to that scale before and that's what the challenge is because if we can't produce billions of gallons a year per facility its not going to amount to anything.

Dr Graham Phillips Presumably because you've got life there bacterial life that can multiply and exponentially grow is the solution.

Dr J. Craig Venter That's right, that's what makes biology such a potent force in all these areas.

Dr Graham Phillips You could create a whole new kind of version of life that has all sorts of amazing properties.

Dr J. Craig Venter That's what biology will become. With these new tools we've developed a design project so just like we have software engineers we actually have software for designing organisms in the computer because DNA is the software and I think that's been one of the biggest surprises you just change the software in the cell, the cell converts into a new species because life is really dynamic constantly reading the DNA and making proteins, you put in new software they read new software make new proteins and turn into something else.

Dr Graham Phillips It could ultimately become kind of a manufacturing technology couldn't it.

Dr J. Craig Venter If you use your imagination a little bit there's probably no aspect of human endeavour that it could not impact. We get all our pharmaceuticals, all our materials for clothing, carpets, plastics, from oil. We can replace all of those starting with carbon dioxide as a source just get cells to manufacture what we want them to do so it could be a new industrial revolution replacing machines with biology.

Dr Graham Phillips What do you say to people who say wait a minute you're playing God here, you're making life, you're Dr Frankenstein?

Dr J. Craig Venter If you remember back to when the first heart transplants were done, the first kidney transplants, every time there's a breakthrough that gives us as humans more control over our own lives people make that argument but we're going from I think the latest number is 6.8 billion people now on the planet to around 9 and a half over the next 40 years and we dont have enough food, water, medicine, fuel or shelter for the 6.8 billion that we have now so we are a 100 per cent dependent on science as a society. If you're cynical you can say we have to now come up with new science to overcome the problems of the previous science and that's in part true, we need these new tools of science to change our chance of survival and not destroy our planet.

YOUR COMMENTS

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Alvaro - 29 May 2010 5:57:37pm

yeah. cool. i guess?but is encouraging the human mould to spread over and consume the blue planet really that ethical ?It's like Norman Borlaug and the introduction of the high-yielding wheat varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. people call him a hero for saving millions of lives - all he did was encourage population growth forcing us to find more and more ways to support the even increasing population; one day a disease will come - of our own making - and we'll all die.so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Jim Thomas - 29 May 2010 12:36:25am

To claim that algae, synthetic or otherwise can just convert Co2 and sunlight to fuel is deeply misleading. Algae also require water, land and nutrients including phosphate and nitrogen. Its been estimated by Australian inventor Saul Griffith's that it would take one olympic size swimming pool of highly efficient genetically engineered algae to be filled up every second for the next 25 years to even make a small dent (half a terrawatt) in global energy needs - thats not to mention the gallons of water, tonnes of phosphate and kilowatts of energy required each moment to make all that fertilizer, pump water and build containment facilities. In terms of contributing to solving global environmental, energy and biodiversity loss crises Venter's proposed solution is indeed "not going to amount to anything." In times of lining his own pockets in the process and green-washing his risky technology, its all very valuable stuff.

Serge - 18 Sep 2011 11:39:59pm

Some algae flourish in salt water and salt water is plentiful.

Phosphate and nitrogen are only catalyst and need not be used up in the process. They could be recycled in an efficient closed system.

Today's poor farming methods and city sewage works dump phosphates and catalysts into rivers and seas where it causes algae blooms.

By capturing discarded phosphate and nitrogen from farms and cities (or straight from the sea) and access CO2 from fossil fuel burring (or straight from the atmosphere) this technology could solve multiple problems which threatens our children's future.

With adequate intellectual and monitory support I think this may be a grand piece to solving the puzzle.

PS. Thank you ABC!

Michelle Franklin - 27 May 2010 8:50:20pm

I think this is the best news for Mankind. Unless we reduce carbondioxide in the air, we will hit a brick wall in 50 years or so.

Food production is also anotherproblem we are facing and Dr CraigVentar has solved that problem as well.

You would have to be a little mad not to embrace this technology, even if their are a few risks.

Because Ventar has created micros in the lab, he should be able to produce a anti micro response for amicrobe that may get out of his laband take on a life of it's own.

The creator takes control.

Way out there - 30 May 2010 2:52:31pm

Does this mean, once this technology or rather, biology, has been perfected. Venter will be able to inject synthetic DNA, cells, genomes or whatnots into the human body to either, repair damaged cells, limbs, body parts.. etc. Or, a more wild imagination, being able to enhance the human body.. sorta' like making a super human?

Nicholas Folkes-APP Organiser - 04 Jun 2010 1:22:34pm

What nonsense to state "unless we reduce carbon dioxide in the air, we will hit a brick wall in 50 years or so". Well, you start first - stop breathing.

Co2 is the currency of life. Anthropogenic Co2 makes up about 3% of carbon emissions comaped to nature which releases near 97% of carbon. It is a natural cycle. Co2 has been much higher in concentrations before and life survived and even flourished due to warmer climate.

The University of East Anglia has been caught out lying about the effects of climate change.

It is easy to see the left wing watermelon coalition are behind these scams. Global warming and climate change is junk science.

Remember, "the Creator" put Co2 in the atmosphere and for man to try and play God is wrong.

Moderator: Please do not post defamatory remarks about individuals on the message board.

davidk - 02 Jul 2010 3:58:49am

Yes, you are absolutely correct, CO2 has been much higher in the past and life did survive. However, 'life' back then did not include humans, with all their infrastructure and expansive cities built right on the coast, at sea level. Low lying areas will easily be flooded by sea level rise due to simple thermal expansion, let alone ice sheet melting (let's not think about fresh water, ~70% of the World supply is stored in glaciers). It really doesn't matter if it is natural or man made, we need to do something to mitigate the impacts to the 100's of millions of people around the world who will be displaced by rising sea levels. 'Life' will go on, just not with us humans.